GLIDING FEAT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 209, 17 June 1935, Page 6

GLIDING FEAT.

CROYDON TO PARIS. "SAFE AS MOTORING." LONDON, May 17. Mr Robert Kronfeld, the Austrian gliding expert, who flew from Croydon to Paris in a motor-glider, using only 5s 6d worth of petrol, was interviewed by the Paris correspondent of the "Daily Mail." He said he made the trip to prove that flying was within the means of the average person and that it was as safe as motoring. He said he could have gone on to Geneva without exhausting his petrol. His wife learned to glide in a few lessons and controlled a motor-glider after a week. A French firm will build gliders of the type used by Mr Kronfeld at a cost of £l5O each.. The delivery of the glider by steamer and rail from London to Paris would have cost £l9, said the airman, compared with flying it for 5s 6d—-less than the taxi fare from Le Bourgefc tO ( Paris. The machine takes off in 80 ya/ds rising spirally like an autogiro and can land at a speed of 80 miles an hour. Mr Kronfeld forecasts the formation of hundreds of gliding clubs with tens of thousand's of members who might make evening glides 30 or 40 miles into the country. He said he had opened works in Middlesex to construct motor-gliders.